FIG. 1 shows an arrangement of functional blocks for a conventional player 800. The player 800 plays back a moving picture stream (such as a video stream, an audio stream or a stream in which video and audio streams are multiplexed) stored on a DVD-RAM disc 810. Specifically, the player 800 carries out the process of playing back the moving picture stream as follows. First, the stream data of the moving picture stream is read out as a read signal from the DVD-RAM disc 810 by way of a pickup 807 and a playback section 804. A series of readout processing is carried out on a read location specified by a playback control section 805 and a read signal generated. Then, the read signal is decoded by a moving picture stream decoding section 803 into a video signal and an audio signal, which are supplied to a video signal output section 801 and an audio signal output section 802, respectively.
The player 800 has a playlist playback function for playing back moving picture streams in a predetermined order in accordance with playlist information. As used herein, the “playlist information” is information defining the order in which part or all of at least one moving picture stream should be played back. When the user specifies an arbitrary location or range, the playlist information is produced by a recorder. The playlist playback function can be used when the playlist information is stored on the DVD-RAM disc 810. Thus, this is a function taking advantage of the random accessibility of DVD-RAM discs.
FIGS. 2(a) through 2(c) show exemplary playback orders as defined by the playlist information. FIG. 2(a) shows a partial playback range specified for a single moving picture stream. Only this playback range of the moving picture stream is played back. FIG. 2(b) shows playback ranges and playback order for a plurality of moving picture streams. These playback ranges are played back one by one in the order as represented by the “playback order”. FIG. 2(c) shows a range in which a video stream and an audio stream are played back synchronously with each other. If a given moving picture stream includes both a video stream and an audio stream, then the playback range of the audio stream can be specified arbitrarily with respect to an arbitrary range of the video stream. Thus, a so-called “after-recording” function is realized. In the playlist information, transition effects during video switching and text to be presented during the playback of a moving picture stream can also be defined.
A camcorder is known as an apparatus for generating a moving picture stream and playlist information and storing them on a DVD-RAM disc. Recently, some camcorders can store data on multiple storage media such as a DVD-RAM disc and a semiconductor memory card (which will be simply referred to herein as a “semiconductor memory”). Such camcorders can store a moving picture stream and/or playlist information, still picture data and so on not only on a DVD-RAM disc but also in a semiconductor memory as well. The user can easily exchange data between the camcorder and an external unit such as a PC by removing the semiconductor memory from the camcorder. Furthermore, as disclosed in Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open Publication No. 11-75198, for example, a camcorder that can store the same video as multiple moving picture streams at different data rates is also known.
Camcorders are often designed with much attention paid to their portability and handiness during video recording sessions. Accordingly, those camcorders are far from being handy for a user who is compiling a playlist. Particularly in making a complicated playlist, the user must do very difficult operations. For example, to increase their portability, a lot of camcorders have either no monitor at all or just a monitor of a small size, if any, although such a monitor would allow the user to check the video just captured. For that reason, their visibility is much lower than PC monitor's or TV screen's. Also, to increase the handiness during video recording sessions, the number and arrangement of camcorder operating switches are optimized for the video recording purposes. Thus, their handiness is poor in specifying a playback location, video transition effects and so on.
Furthermore, the playlist information is defined for each single moving picture stream. Accordingly, even if the same video were stored as multiple moving picture streams with different data rates, the user still had to make playlists for those moving picture streams separately, which is very troublesome for him or her.